Follow these steps to find out how to start a blog and promote it online
Are you a fitness professional and want to learn how to start a blog? Then you’ll find this guide useful. I understand, for some of you, that starting a blog means getting out of your comfort zone. But no need to worry. At Future Fit, we have a team of professional bloggers and specialist fitness trainers, so we have put our resources together and we want to show you the simplest way of starting a blog.
You’ll learn how to start a blog today in 5 easy steps that’ll take about 10 to 15 minutes.
Learn how to start a blog by following these simple steps:
Note: we are going to recommend two hosting companies and don’t have any affiliation with these companies.
Click here to start a blog with WordPress, then use this tutorial below for easy directions.
If you’re looking to start a WordPress blog for cheap, then you have two options:
Why do we recommend these two options? Simply because their price includes a free domain and the technical integration with WordPress.
In other words, you don’t have to do anything, their support team provide you with a brand-new blog and the platform.
What is WordPress?
WordPress is the world’s most popular blogging platform. Many famous bloggers, Fortune 500 companies, news websites and celebrities use WordPress. For example, the CNN and New York Times are using WordPress for their blogs.
What is a blog?
A blog is an informational resource that is regularly updated, normally written in a conversational style with the goal of attracting new readers and generating an income online. You are on the Future Fit blog right now, for example.
Why should I start a blog?
Starting a blog is the simplest business decision to generate extra income for your business, remotely and from anywhere in the world. You don’t need to be a professional writer or a web developer in order to be successful with it. You can start regardless of your age, location and experience with websites to start building a profitable business.
How can I start if am not a web developer?
In 2022, starting a blog is very easy, you don’t have to learn any line of code. This guide is created to provide easy to follow steps and support along the way.
You can click here to purchase a domain name and create a blog, then continue to follow the easy steps below.
The very first thing you will need to do when starting a WordPress blog on Bluehost or SiteGround is to think about what you want your domain name to be. This doesn’t have to be a tough call, you can simply have a domain name with your name and surname, for example, www.joeblack.com, if you are a freelance personal trainer.
Advantages of using your own name
Do you want to choose your own name? Great choice! One of the main advantages can be that the whole blogging activity will be associated with your name, and this helps spread your name around.
Most fitness professionals name their blogs with their own names.
Can I change my blog name later?
Yes, you can easily change the name of your blog later, you’ll just need to buy a new domain name (around £10). While the name you choose for your blog is important, it’s something you can always change in the future—so don’t let this step hold you back.
What happens if my name isn’t available?
When you start your blog with a hosting company like Bluehost, or Siteground, they’ll let you choose your domain name later. If the domain name you want isn’t available, don’t get hung up at this stage—just select their option to choose your name later after getting everything else set up and you can have more time to think (remember, execution is what you’re here for, not perfection).
What is a blog niche?
Your blog’s niche is the general topic area that you’ll be focusing your content around. Examples include topics like nutrition, food, fitness, lifestyle, and otherwise. Incorporating a word or two that clearly signals what your content is about, within the name of your blog (like fitnessjohn.co.uk)—will be very helpful for your future blog readers.
The second step in starting a blog is actually getting your blog online. That’s what a web hosting company will do for you. In this step, you’ll be selecting the blogging platform and web hosting plan you’ll use to get your blog online.
Before we go about selecting a platform and web hosting, let’s talk about what is web hosting and how much it costs.
What is web hosting?
Hosting is like having a home, when people come in, they are able to see what’s inside. Hosting allows people to enter your website by typing the domain name, also known as URL.
How much does web hosting cost?
In order to receive the cheapest alternative for web hosting, all you need to do is choose the Bluehost Basic option at £3.19/month.
The Basic plan is all you need, for now, you can skip the Plus, Choice Plus and Pro plans as they are more expensive. You can always change later when your blog will grow in readers and GB of storage. The amount of money you spend on the Plus and Pro plans is not justified at this stage, so you don’t need them.
You also don’t need to buy hosting for unlimited websites, if you are a single person blogger, all you have is 1 website so the Basic plan will do perfectly fine, for the moment.
If you choose SiteGround, the StartUp option costs less at £2.95/month for 12 months period. While it’s cheaper, it doesn’t include a free domain name, which needs to be bought separately.
But it doesn’t cost much, only £14/per year.
As you can see in the image below, when you choose the 36-months plan, you’ll also get a free domain name, which comes useful because you can save money.
Let’s say you have chosen Bluehost over SiteGround. But if you choose SiteGround, it’s also very easy to create an account.
Now it’s time to create an account. You can start by filling in the details manually.
If you don’t want to enter your information manually, you can connect your Bluehost account with your Google account. Either work!
Note that Bluehost doesn’t offer a monthly payment option. Companies that offer monthly options tend to cost a bit more.
You can choose here the 12-24 or 36 months package.
If you want to start a WordPress blog on Bluehost then continue reading.
This part isn’t hard at all. Bluehost makes it very easy to create a WordPress blog and it is free.
You now have a WordPress blog. Time for a second celebration!
You will have to work on the design and produce high-quality content, of course. This is the topic for the next chapters.
Think about this:
All those things help, but they are not the main reason.
You read the blog because you care about what they say. Creating strong content is what will bring you readers and help you to eventually make money blogging can be a very profitable venture.
This is why the first thing you need to do, is come up with content ideas that people want to read about.
Here are 3 strategies for finding content people care about, with examples.
While there are some risks in choosing a blogging niche based on your interests, it certainly doesn’t have to be a receipt for disaster. Using your own know-how to create interesting and valuable content can be extremely profitable.
To start, writing about your own passion can help you stay motivated because starting a blog and making money out of it, it’s not simple and you’ll have to overcome lots of hurdles and problems if you are deeply invested in what you are creating.
Zanna Van Dijk studied Speech Sciences at the University of Sheffield for 4 years while pursuing fitness as a hobby. Throughout the years her passion for fitness grew and she launched her blog discussing topics related to travel and fitness.
She focussed on educating women on lifting weights using social media and she caught the attention of broadcast media, securing covers on Sunday Times, Women Fitness Magazine and Healthy Magazine. Now her blog is ranked as the top 10 fitness blog in the UK.
Has working in a particular industry made you know the ins and outs? Maybe you have a skill set that is particularly attractive and you can use it to start writing about a particular topic?
Turning your work experience into a blog is a smart way to enter a market with a leg up that isn’t easy for others to copy and duplicate.
Carly Rowena started her own YouTube channel showing personal training workouts. Slowly, her passion for personal training crept into the blog. Over time, she turned her passion for the fitness lifestyle into a large and successful blog where you can expect travel, wellness tips and innovative workout challenges.
Do I need to start finding my niche early?
The example above suggests you don’t have to. You can write about things that simply interest you without a precise calendar or strategy to stick to. However, it’s advisable that you find a niche soon rather than later, the reason being that you inform your audience on how to find you and it’s easier when you connect with other bloggers.
Whether you already have a blog or not, there is a wealth of insight you can glean from search engines.
If have a topic in mind, you can ask Google what other content suggestions people are searching for. Are there are any trends or interesting bits of searches you can use as inspiration to write about?
These suggestions could all be topics to cover.
In addition to the search suggestions, you can also check out the related searches at the bottom of the page:
If you’re not sure what to search for to generate these suggestions, start with the content titles you’ve already posted.
The reason why this is such a good strategy is that you know the topics will be relevant to your audience.
Once you’ve decided on the first blog post you want to write, you’ll navigate to the “Add New Post” section from your WordPress Dashboard.
Next, you’ll be taken to a brand-new article page that’ll look like this (a totally blank canvas):
One of the reasons to write a blog is to make people read it, right?
So, it pays to spend some time on writing a headline that attracts people’s attention, earns you more clicks and, more importantly, delivers the promise that what you write is actually interesting and helpful for your readers.
There is nothing more useless than writing a blog post without any value on it: it’s a waste of time and you can be assured it will be ignored.
How can you write great headlines?
Let’s say that you know for a fact that Paleo diets are now a huge trend in nutrition and fitness and you want people to know more about the underrated benefits.
You’d click into the “Add Title” bar on your new post page and type in a title like…
“15 Paleo diets benefits you have never heard of”
As a starting point to writing strong blog post titles, learn by observing the headlines of other successful bloggers in your niche.
If you’re unsure whether or not you’ve written a strong headline, take it for a test drive by using the free headline analyser tool from CoSchedule. It’s super cool—you just paste in the headline you’re thinking about using, and it gives you a score on a scale of 0 to 100 (with 100 being a truly perfect headline), based on their analysis of millions of headlines.
You’ll get better at writing headlines as time goes on and you do more of it.
Once you’ve written your first blog post (and ideally get it to the 1,000+ word range) you’re almost ready to publish!
Take a few minutes to double-check on the Yoast SEO suggestions and ensure your blog post is SEO-friendly, which will give you the best chance of ranking well in organic search.
Then, you’re ready to hit publish!
How do people find your articles? “Write and they will come”, someone said. Sadly, this is hardly the case.
One of the most important, and yet the less thought about strategies, is content promotion.
Here at Future Fit, our blog in 2019 generated more than 150,000 readers and it’s growing every month. So, we wanted to show you how promotion plays a key role in generating a high number of readers.
But where do you start? Here are a few of the best ways to start sharing your posts and getting them in front of new readers.
The easiest places are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, Reddit, Pinterest, YouTube and Instagram.
You can start sharing your content on those social channels, however, you need to be aware that they were not created the same. You have to figure out which channel suits your content best.
That said, let’s have a closer look:
Other than sharing on social media, there are more advanced and very efficient ways to promote yourself online.
One of them is guest blogging.
What is guest blogging?
Bloggers love to help each other out and you’ll find out that the entire community is very united, bloggers normally know each other and, rather than competing with each other, they work together often.
With guest posting, bloggers let you publish content on their websites so you can tap into their audiences and gain awareness, and traffic and make your name mentioned in your niche.
At Future Fit we have literally done dozens of guest posts across fitness, nutrition, and Pilates and our staff do guest posting within their fields of expertise.
Guest blogging is the best way to find new clients, promote your content and generate new readers.
How to find guest post opportunities?
You can start guest blogging with a simple Google search.
The first thing you need to do is create a list of phrases that include terms relevant to your industry and keywords such as “write for us”, “submit a guest post”, “contribute an article”, and “become a contributor”.
For instance, if I want to find sites that accept guest posts in a fitness niche, then my search query will look like this:
“fitness” in title “write for us”
If a large guest blogging campaign isn’t in the cards right now, try reposting your content on Medium—a site that’s free to use for readers and writers. You can even look for a Medium Publication that’s popular in your niche and submit your post to them.
There’s also Quora—a question and answer site that lets anyone respond to user’s queries. You can search for relevant topics in my niche and then answer questions I’ve already written about on my blog. This way I know I’m giving them good value and can even link back to the full post on my blog.
Lastly, if you’re more business-oriented in your blog posts, you might want to post them on LinkedIn where that audience spend a lot of their time.
To sum up, these are the steps to start and promote a blog:
That’s it!
Will you take the leap and start a blog today?